Prisoner accounts laid out in lawsuits, investigations from a new watchdog office and internal department documents obtained by Crosscut point to a pattern of delay that leaves the state’s 18,800 incarcerated men and women unable to access basic health services.
Homicides and suicides in prison may draw more focus, but, in Washington as in much of the country, nine out of 10 prisoners who die inside fall to illness. And, though many are lifers, about a third of those who don’t leave prison alive are dead before they turn 55.
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